Why
should I save your husband's child?"
"Ah, Dr. Miller!" she cried, with his wife's voice,--she never knew how
much, in that dark hour, she owed to that resemblance--"it is _my_
child, and I have never injured you. It is my child, Dr. Miller, my only
child. I brought it into the world at the risk of my own life! I have
nursed it, I have watched over it, I have prayed for it,--and it now
lies dying! Oh, Dr. Miller, dear Dr. Miller, if you have a heart, come
and save my child!"
"Madam," he answered more gently, moved in spite of himself, "my heart
is broken. My people lie dead upon the streets, at the hands of yours.
The work of my life is in ashes,--and, yonder, stretched out in death,
lies my own child! God! woman, you ask too much of human nature! Love,
duty, sorrow, _justice_, call me here. I cannot go!"
She rose to her full height. "Then you are a murderer," she cried
wildly. "His blood be on your head, and a mother's curse beside!"
The next moment, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, she had thrown
herself at his feet,--at the feet of a negro, this proud white
woman,--and was clasping his knees wildly.
"O God!" she prayed, in tones which quivered with anguish, "pardon my
husband's sins, and my own, and move this man's hard heart, by the blood
of thy Son, who died to save us all!"
It was the last appeal of poor humanity. When the pride of intellect and
caste is broken; when we grovel in the dust of humiliation; when
sickness and sorrow come, and the shadow of death falls upon us, and
there is no hope elsewhere,--we turn to God, who sometimes swallows the
insult, and answers the appeal.
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